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In the new HBO documentary about Steven Spielberg, the legendary film director credits his first boss for unleashing his creativity. Spielberg recalls a conversation with former MCA/Universal president Sid Sheinberg, who had offered the 20-year-old Spielberg a seven-year contract. Sheinberg made the following promise, which gave Spielberg the confidence he needed to do his best work:

“I will support you as strongly in failure as I will in success.”

Spielberg said Sheinberg was “true to his word” and his promise became “like an anthem.” Sheinberg came to Spielberg’s defense when the production of Jaws ran over budget and the word around Hollywood was that the shark movie would be an epic disaster. Jaws, of course, became one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

In Silicon Valley, I’m surrounded by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who wear failure as a badge of honor. Google is known for celebrating engineers who take calculated risks — and fail. Some companies even throw “failure parties” to celebrate ideas that didn’t work out, but that planted the seeds for another great idea. In the past couple of years, however, I’ve realized encouraging risk-taking is not the norm, especially across companies, cultures and countries.

On two visits earlier this year to the United Arab Emirates, I visited universities focused on creating the next generation of entrepreneurs to take the UAE into a “post-oil” world.

“What’s the biggest challenge you face in encouraging entrepreneurship?” I asked university instructors.

“Overcoming the stigma of failure,” they said.

In many countries, the notion of “saving face” is a familiar refrain. People are reluctant to admit mistakes because they think it's shameful. Social psychologists say that, regardless of culture, most people have an inherent need to fit in, to be seen as winners. Leaders who want to unleash innovation need to help teams overcome the fear of failure by creating a culture where people feel comfortable taking risks or proposing radical ideas.

Building a risk-taking culture starts at the top. After a fiasco with a new technology product at Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella sent an extraordinary email to the team who built the product. “Keep pushing, and know that I am with you…the key is to keep learning and improving.” In an interview about the incident with USA Today, Nadella said, “It’s so critical for leaders not to freak people out, but to give them air cover to solve the real problem. If people are doing things out of fear, it’s hard or impossible to actually drive any innovation.”

In his new book, Hit Refresh, Nadella talks openly about changing the culture at Microsoft from a “know-it-all” to a “learn-it-all” mentality. “Our culture had become rigid. Each employee had to prove to everyone that he or she knew it all and was the smartest person in the room.”

If you’re a leader, are your employees confident that you’ll provide ‘air cover’ if they take a risk and fail? Nadella says that a “growth mindset” requires that leaders encourage people to take risks, move along quickly when they make mistakes, and to recognize “failure happens along the way to mastery.”

For Spielberg, mistakes did lead to mastery. After he had massive cost overruns on Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, studios didn’t want to work with him and his partner George Lucas on Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg guaranteed he’d deliver the film on time and on budget. Spielberg could make the promise confidently because he had learned from his mistakes.